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Mini-Zork

About the Story

This story file is a condensed version of Zork I, Infocom's most popular title, reduced to make it viable for the cassette-based Commodore 64. The only Infocom story file ever to be intended to run from cassette rather than disk, the Mini-Zork has been compared to a Reader's Digest edition of a classic. The Mini-Zork is one of several remakings of Zork from the final years of Infocom: there were also the Solid Gold edition, the never-completed German translation and the sequels Beyond Zork and Zork Zero.

Mini-Zork I had a brief shelf-life in computer shops, in Activision packaging, but it is now best known for its magazine release. In November 1990, a year after Infocom had effectively become defunct, the Mini-Zork was given away with the British Commodore users' magazine "Zzap! 64" no. 67, which is now a collector's item.

Editorial Reviews

This is a free demo of Zork I. Although substantially smaller than the full game, it contains all the memorable bits - kind of like a Reader's Digest Condensed Zork. See Dungeon for a larger dose and more commentary.

Remember the days when you might worry if your computer was big enough to play Zork I?

Enter Mini-Zork, the smaller version of Zork I, which itself was the smaller version of Zork (Dungeon).

If you have never played Zork before, maybe you should play this game first. The mazes are simpler, the game is smaller, some of the puzzles have been removed.

If you have played Zork I before, forget it. The maze is smaller- but it's also been completely re-written, prepare to map it all over again. And some of the things you might expect are gone, though descriptions might imply otherwise (Spoiler - click to show)The egg still has a description that implies that it can be opened. If you try to open it by hand, the game tells you that this is removed and is only in full Zork, however, people who played before might go to all the trouble of giving it to the thief before realizing that this is useless.

I get it, Infocom was trying to get Zork to a bigger market by making it more accessable, but this realistically should be listed as a seperate version of the Zork I game, rather than it's own unique entry, and people thinking of playing it should treat it as such.

If you enjoyed Mini-Zork...

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